I can rewind time to prevent death

After walking a distance, he looked back at the basement staircase but saw no sign of the woman in the white dress.

Approaching the hanging object, Yan Junze climbed onto a wooden box on the floor and reached out to touch it, confirming it was a corpse.

The body was in an advanced state of decay, with only a skeleton remaining, although the white dress was barely tattered. However, a thick layer of dust covered the surface of the dress, making it indistinguishable from ordinary clothing.

Yan Junze wondered how, despite such decay, the protruding tongue could still be intact?

It should have rotted away to nothing by now.

The wooden box was not high enough. Carrying a sense of wonder, he carefully stepped on the box, moving in front of the hanging woman.

The box creaked alarmingly, as if it might break under his weight at any moment.

Yan Junze steadied himself cautiously and then looked up, only to be taken aback.

The disheveled skeletal face held a soft, limp tongue hanging down; surprisingly, only this tongue and the hair remained intact.

Yan Junze glanced toward the basement staircase; under the flashlight's beam, he didn't see Ye Zhennan's soul.

There was still time.

He thought for a moment, suppressing his disgust, and tiptoed to reach out.

Since the tongue hung down nearly ten centimeters, even standing on the box was enough to touch it.

The touch was not as Yan Junze had imagined; it didn't crumble or turn to powder. In fact, the tongue was soft and seemed as fresh as that of a pig just slaughtered, with little difference.

A wave of queasiness swept over him. Yan Junze shivered and looked down to see if there was anything else to stand on to get higher.

Because at this height, he could only touch the tongue and could not put it back in the skeleton's mouth.

Under the light of the flashlight, he quickly spotted a stepladder lying on the ground, almost buried in dust. If not for careful observation, he would have missed its existence.Nôv(el)B\\jnn

Yan Junze prepared to jump down from the box to set the ladder up and then climb it. Once he was level with the height of the hanging body, he planned to find a way to stuff the tongue back into Ye Zhennan's mouth.

However, before jumping off the box, he felt a prick of caution and looked back at the basement staircase again.

He saw a pair of feet in a white dress already appearing at the stairs, standing on the last step before descending into the basement, only three steps away from reaching the basement floor.

Those feet, illuminated under the focused beam of his flashlight, were strikingly conspicuous.

"She's here already."

Yan Junze dared not delay any longer, jumping down from the box and quickly lifting the ladder, which was covered in a thick layer of dust. The dust filled the air, causing him to choke several times.

Once the ladder was steady, he immediately began climbing without missing a beat.

The ladder creaked worryingly, showing signs of neglect and threatening to break under a slightly more forceful step.

He slowed down, making sure his last step was secure before daring to take the next.

Having climbed to the second-to-top rung of the stepladder and straddled it, his body was now stable enough. He was at a height where he could stuff the tongue into Ye Zhennan's skeletal mouth.

Before grabbing the tongue, Yan Junze glanced once more toward the basement stairway, where the pair of white shoes remained.

Yan Junze felt a surge of relief inside, hoping that Ye Zhennan's soul would continue to stand there until he completed his task.

After all, he was struggling for her beauty!

He extended his right hand and gently grasped the drooping tongue, which felt soft and lifeless, devoid of the slippery sensation due to lack of saliva.

Goosebumps rose and fell repeatedly on Yan Junze's arms...

He couldn't stuff the tongue back with one hand, so with no other option, Yan Junze put the flashlight in his mouth and used both hands to vigorously stuff the limp tongue back into the skeleton's mouth.

But he soon realized that the upper and lower jaws of the skeleton were loose and couldn't close, so after half of the tongue was stuffed in, it quickly slipped out again.

"This won't work."

Yan Junze shook his head, holding the tongue in both hands, and subconsciously glanced at the basement staircase.

Suddenly, he shuddered, only to see that the pair of feet that had been standing on the steps just a moment ago had now vanished without a trace.

Under the beam of his flashlight at the staircase entrance, there was nothing but empty space.

"Did she go upstairs? Or did she come into the basement?" Yan Junze's heart pounded like a drum.

He quickly turned his head, the light from the flashlight in his mouth rapidly scanning the surroundings, but it seemed he saw no sign of Ye Zhennan's soul.

It couldn't have gone up; that woman's soul must have already entered the basement.

Yan Junze knew he had to speed up. He forced himself to focus on the long tongue, grabbed it again, and stuffed it violently into the skeleton's mouth.

At the same time, this time he finally saw clearly what the structure inside the mouth of Ye Zhennan's corpse really was.

He saw at the end of the tongue, inside the mouth, there was a clump that looked like spider silk, a sticky substance that firmly held the tongue in place, preventing it from slipping out completely.

If he could stuff the sharp end of the tongue in and stick it to that sticky substance, then the whole tongue, even if fully inserted, would not slip out again.

Yan Junze had an idea.

Just as he was about to use both hands to stuff in the tongue, a muffled and unclear voice suddenly rang out from behind him, as if talking with something in the mouth, the words garbled and indistinct.

Just like before the Rewind, this time, the clever Yan Junze understood again that the meaning of the sentence was roughly: "What are you doing?"

The voice emanated right behind his head, making him dare not turn around, for to do so would have been to come face-to-face with her.

The Yin Yang Master Lin Yishan once said that one must not make eye contact with Ye Zhennan, so when the voice sounded, Yan Junze just gave an involuntary shudder, then continued to work hard at stuffing the tongue.

One could imagine, at this moment, Ye Zhennan's soul was hovering in mid-air, parallel to him who was standing on the stepladder.

"Let go!"

The instinct to protect her own body was triggered, and the woman behind him barked a muffled and hoarse command.

"I'm helping you!"

However, far from letting go, Yan Junze gripped the greasy tongue even more vigorously, working hard to stick the sharp end onto that innermost sticky substance.

Whew!

Yan Junze suddenly felt a chill on his neck as the soul's hands wrapped around it. The flashlight in his mouth dropped, landing perfectly on the wooden plank at the very top of the stepladder.

Almost instinctively, Yan Junze was about to Rewind.

However, he knew that at this moment, he was racing against time. If he could stick the tongue before the soul acted, then his great task would be accomplished.

The critical issue was that he needed to pay constant attention to his breathing. If he began to struggle for breath, nearing the point of suffocation, then he would have no choice but to Rewind.

Fortunately, the woman's strength did not reach its peak the moment she grasped his neck; otherwise, Yan Junze's eyes would have bulged out of their sockets.

Her hands' force was gradually increasing, which provided Yan Junze with the opportunity to stuff the tongue in one fierce attempt.

Even so, at that moment he still felt his head swell and breathing grow difficult, as if a steel hoop were tightening around his neck.

With his left hand, he grabbed the tip of the long tongue and forcefully stuffed it to the spot with the sticky substance, pressing down hard on the spot before Yan Junze finally let go.

This time, the tongue stayed put, no longer sliding out of the mouth.

[Tongue, Anxiety-Inducing (Medium), Completed, Awarded 300 Different Dimension Energy points.]